Trying to create seamless normal maps between two meshes

[donnerwetter]

So, I've been working on seamless schlong + body transitions for my mod. While blending the diffuse maps between the two meshes is perfectly doable, the lighting on the other hand just won't match up. Here's what my latest attempt to blend the normal maps looked like in Blender:

 

Spoiler

 

It looked perfectly seamless to me, at least. And yet, when I load the new normals in Outfit Studio or ingame, I get this:

 

Spoiler

 

What am I missing here?

[Hannahavok]

Not every rendering engine will interpret normals exactly the same way. texturing that negates seams in Blender won't necessarily do so in Skyrim or Outfit Studio.

[donnerwetter]

48 minutes ago, Hannahavok said:

Not every rendering engine will interpret normals exactly the same way. texturing that negates seams in Blender won't necessarily do so in Skyrim or Outfit Studio.

 

Are there alternate ways I could go about doing this?

[Blaze69]

4 hours ago, donnerwetter said:

What am I missing here?

Schlongs are special in the sense that the position they are saved at in the nif doesn't necessarily match the one in the actual game because there's both skin transforms and the SOS Auxbones behavior file at play in there too. So it is possible that while the normals in the above pic are seamless, the position OS is placing the schlong nif at doesn't match the one the normals were built for and that's what causes the mismatch.

 

Have you actually checked it out ingame? It might actually match there, although I assume OS' placement would be more accurate than Blender's (specially so if you exported as OBJ from OS or NifSkope to get it into Blender in the first place).

 

One thing I can say for sure: assuming the axis layout for the Model Space Normals in the Blender pic is accurate to Skyrim, that normalmap should definitely be seamless; MSN-using meshes only care about info in the normalmap itself so if those are (visually/color-wise) seamless then the "normal effect" they create should be seamless as well.

[donnerwetter]

Quote

Have you actually checked it out ingame? It might actually match there, although I assume OS' placement would be more accurate than Blender's (specially so if you exported as OBJ from OS or NifSkope to get it into Blender in the first place).

 

I have- the shadows looked to be the same. There were also no intermediate file formats involved, or even mesh exports of any kind. I just used EvilReflex's blend file from here

to do the texture editing, swapping in the textures I wanted to work on (mainly because it already had the body and schlong meshes setup) and then saving the edited textures. I suppose I could try simply moving the schlong around in outfit studio and seeing if it matches up at any point ?

 

2 hours ago, Blaze69 said:

Schlongs are special in the sense that the position they are saved at in the nif doesn't necessarily match the one in the actual game because there's both skin transforms and the SOS Auxbones behavior file at play in there too. So it is possible that while the normals in the above pic are seamless, the position OS is placing the schlong nif at doesn't match the one the normals were built for and that's what causes the mismatch.

 

 

 

One thing I can say for sure: assuming the axis layout for the Model Space Normals in the Blender pic is accurate to Skyrim, that normalmap should definitely be seamless; MSN-using meshes only care about info in the normalmap itself so if those are (visually/color-wise) seamless then the "normal effect" they create should be seamless as well.

 

If this is the case, how do I figure out how to position the schlong while editing?

 

 

[Blaze69]

6 minutes ago, donnerwetter said:

If this is the case, how do I figure out how to position the schlong while editing?

 

 

And the answer is...

Spoiler

I've honestly got no fucking clue.

 

Since you said you used EvilReflex's file which is supposed to work and have been used for this purpose in more than one other mod, I'd just roll with it and check it out directly ingame while ignoring NifSkope and OS themselves. It may be a bit more cumbersome to go back and forth for minor adjustments this way, but it's the only way to know for sure how it'll actually turn out ingame.

 

And if you're using a different body or schlong mesh, well... I guess try to use the existing ones as reference for placement, maybe?

 

[donnerwetter]

25 minutes ago, Blaze69 said:

 

 

And the answer is...

  Hide contents

I've honestly got no fucking clue.

 

Since you said you used EvilReflex's file which is supposed to work and have been used for this purpose in more than one other mod, I'd just roll with it and check it out directly ingame while ignoring NifSkope and OS themselves. It may be a bit more cumbersome to go back and forth for minor adjustments this way, but it's the only way to know for sure how it'll actually turn out ingame.

 

And if you're using a different body or schlong mesh, well... I guess try to use the existing ones as reference for placement, maybe?

 

 

The thing is though, even after baking them with the blend file, the normals aren't seamless, which is why I started futzing around with texture editing in the first place. The lighting also seems to match between OS and the game itself.

[EvilReFlex]

Diffuse, specular and subsurface texture also needs to be seamless and the nif also needs to have the same values as the body vor the material 

[donnerwetter]

I just had an "aha" moment- thinking about the problem some more I realized the schlong was designed to fit the lower poly original CBBE SE mesh in mind, not 3BA which has different downstairs geometry (even discounting my reverse vaginoplasty)

 

I loaded 3BA and CBBE SE side-by-side, and what do you know-

 

It's certainly looking a lot more seamless on the latter. I feel like I should've realized this a lot sooner ?‍♂️

 

I'm wondering what the best approach here would be- to try to alter the shape of my mesh to more closely resemble that of the original CBBE SE body, or to just do my Blender normal map painting on the vaginaless 3BA body instead.